The house is a collection of spaces to
create a range of experiences and I guess we could sort of think of
it as a container of curiosities in a way.
I'm Tim Greer from Tonkin Zulaikha Greer Architects and I was the lead architect
for this project that we call The Almora House.
Almora House is located in the upper reaches of the Balmoral
sand slope just at the base of the escarpment and of course it's on Camaraigal Country.
So our clients had lived on the site for approximately 20 years in a house
that they'd built onto over the time and the brief was very interesting because they have
a spectacular art collection which they've built up over the last three decades or so,
but the brief wasn't to design a house around contemporary art it was to design a house for our
clients and then our clients would decide where to locate which pieces of their art collection.
So the house is very much organised around a spine that runs almost north
south at the north end is the entrance and it's marked by a significant piece
of sculpture and then the southern end is marked by a significant tree, and if
you imagine the house stretching its way along the spine with a series of rooms that push out
into the garden and making interstitial spaces in between or little courtyards.
So from the front door there's a guest bathroom and a guest
bedroom that open onto a little courtyard
and then as you walk south along the spine on the left is the first of the
living rooms it's not a formal living room then we have a dining room which is a double
height space and then to the south is the kitchen and then off to the left
is a more informal room that essentially has glass on four sides opening into the garden.
As we come up the stairs on the left is the master bedroom and the powder room
and then on the right hand side is a study and then on the other side
is a gallery and then a study you go through a wall which is a study
which again has glass opening onto three sides opening into the garden.
Our clients asked us for an enduring, timeless and more to the point maintenance-free house
and so we came up with this party of a concrete frame and then all the windows
and the moving things are contained within the timber and why the concrete was so attractive
was it was also a very neutral material and it's a very calm material so it created a
calm house but it also created this wonderful soft backdrop to put any range of artworks on.
So the spatial richness of the house is derived from a draped concrete roof
and that sort of reveals itself as you move through the house and it's very much a drape
because when you stand back and look at the house the concrete's supported
at the top and it falls down so it has this kind of languid softness about it.
This has to be one of the most enjoyable projects I've ever worked on as an architect working with
our clients was such an inspiring process and we had a lot of wonderful people who worked on
the project, we had a Belinda Pajkovic as the project architect we had Bellavard Construction
who built the house and we had Grahame Rowe who worked on the interior furnishings.
One of my most favourite parts of the house is the wrong side of the bookshelf the library upstairs
has a wonderful bookshelf and we decided to make the back of it slightly frosted glass
that you look up from the dining room and of course you just see the white abstract side of
the bookshelf so we're used to looking at books on the front with all their spines and titles
and authors screaming out at us but from the back side they just become this abstract composition.